NEW YORK  It's better to be on the red team than on the blue team in an online multiplayer shooting game, according to researchers.

The scientists studied the outcomes of 1,347 matchups between elite teams playing "Unreal Tournament 2004," a so-called first-person shooter game. The main activity in the game is running around and shooting at the avatars of the opposing team.

As is the case with most team-based online shooting games, players of Unreal Tournament can choose to be on either the red team or the blue team, and their avatars wear those colors. But that choice is not as neutral as it seems: 55 percent of the time, the red team won, according to the study published this week in the journal Cyberpsychology & Behavior.

Neuroscientist Mihai Moldovan of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark said the reason was most likely that the color red may act as a psychological distractor for men, possibly because men flush and turn red when they're angry.

"While this is really an interesting analysis, the notion of red team versus blue team has been ingrained in the Unreal Tournament series for years. We don't anticipate any immediate changes to team colors," said Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games, the Cary, N.C.-based developer of the series.

Another study found in 2005 that wearing red is an advantage in real-life sports. British scientists found that athletes wearing red in one-on-one events like wrestling at the 2004 Olympics were more likely to win.

The game results for the Unreal Tournament study were culled from public servers used by players around the world. Moldovan worked with researchers at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, Romania, on the study.

_ Peter Svensson, AP Technology Writer

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Web site offers insiders' look at major employers

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Ever wonder whether you'd be better off working some place else?

A new Web site called Glassdoor.com is trying to make it easier to find out by compiling free snapshots of the current salaries paid by hundreds of major employers, along with reviews anonymously written by current and past workers.

"We think it's super important that people are able to find a job where they can go home happy at the end of the day," said Robert Hohman, Glassdoor's co-founder and chief executive.

The Sausalito-based startup's other founders include Rich Barton, CEO of online home appraisal site Zillow.com.

"I like the idea, but there is absolutely no question that some CEO is going to see something negative on the site and hit the roof," Parr said. "It just makes me wonder how long it will take before they get sued."

A Glassdoor feature that allows workers to rate their CEOs could be particularly provocative.

In Glassdoor's test phase based on a small sampling of opinions, Microsoft Corp. workers seemed to have a higher opinion of their CEO, Steve Ballmer, than Yahoo Inc. workers had of their CEO, Jerry Yang, who spurned a $47.5 billion takeover offer from Ballmer last month.

Hohman is trying to convince employers that Glassdoor is a great tool for gathering worker feedback. With 12 employees, the startup plans to screen all reviews to identify remarks that seem fabricated or libelous.

Glassdoor has an incentive not to alienate corporate America because it hopes to make money from advertising.

To start, Glassdoor is allowing all visitors to look at the salary information and reviews of four high-tech heavyweights -- Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc.

To get the skinny on other companies, visitors must be willing to reveal their salaries and feelings about their employers.

About 3,300 people provided information on about 250 companies during Glassdoor's testing phase.

_ Michael Liedtke, AP Business Writer

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Engineers search for fuel-saving big rigs

MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) -- Tractor trailers lose valuable miles per gallon to the drag that air exerts, but air may also help tame the fuel guzzling forces.

Scientists at Georgia Tech's Research Institute are creating a "circulation control system" that blows a steady current of air around the back of the truck to help boost fuel efficiency.

Trailers are an aerodynamic nightmare, essentially boxes on wheels that can't be rounded off because that would cost valuable cargo space. As they plow down the road, getting 7 miles per gallon when they're lucky, wind funneling over the box creates a suction effect that drags down the vehicle.

Robert Englar, a Georgia Tech researcher, called the vortex an "aerodynamic anchor."

Englar, who helped develop air stabilizers working for Lockheed Martin, decided to apply some of the same principles to big rigs. He connects curved bumpers at a truck's back end to a blower that pushes a steady stream of air through them and out the sides. That air flow reduces drag by replacing it with a positive pressure that helps propel the vehicle.

On a test track, Englar's system reduced drag by 32 percent and increased fuel efficiency by 12 percent. That means a truck that once would get 5 miles per gallon gets 5.6 miles per gallon. That marginal increase could save thousands of dollars a year in fuel for a single truck.

"If you look at the poor guy putting $1,200 of diesel fuel in his gas tank, some would give their right arm for a 12 percent increase (in efficiency)," Englar said.

He hopes to bring the gadget's cost below $1,000 over the next few years and some day to include safety features, such as sensors to trigger the air flow to reverse when a driver starts to brake or push against threatening wind gusts.

It's one of few efforts to help trailers as well as tractors reduce wind drag.

"The tractors got smart," said Englar. "The trailers didn't."

With Englar's work, that could soon change.

_ Greg Bluestein, AP Writer

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